NorthEast Radio Watch 8/26/2024: After WCBS, What Now?

In this week’s issue… An emotional, classy farewell to WCBS and all it meant – Beasley’s Boston cutbacks – Shamrock shuffles Scranton (again) – WJTO’s new dial spot – The 2025 Tower Site Calendar is coming!

By SCOTT FYBUSH

*For listeners in NEW YORK and far beyond, the demise of WCBS (880) over the weekend became something much bigger than just the last chapter in Audacy’s long march toward consolidating the two all-news brands that have brought the company both huge revenue and some of the highest operating expenses of any of its stations.

We’ve already gone over most of that story already, and our content partner Lance Venta has a must-read deep dive up on RadioInsight today into the business realities that went into Audacy’s decision – and the Beasley news from Boston that’s the other big story later in this week’s column.

So with the decision made – how do you say goodbye to a radio station that has been the soundtrack of a city for almost six decades?

There’s no real template for these things, unless you do it the way Corus did in Canada and just pull the plug without any farewell or any notice. Thankfully, Audacy trusted the WCBS crew to stage their own on-air wake, which played out over the course of a little more than a week as some longtime staffers took planned vacations and said early goodbyes.

Thursday turned out to be the day that most of the regular WCBS staff was on the air for the last time, and it was a combination of WCBS executing its standard all-news format right up to the end and an on-air wake. The morning team of Wayne Cabot and Paul Murnane kicked off the day with their last show together, ending in some words of farewell just before 10 that led into one of the station’s two big retrospective broadcasts.

From 10 until 1, Brigitte Quinn’s “Newsline” looked inward, filling the three hours with conversation and memories from current WCBS staff and a huge roster of alumni who jammed into the Hudson Square newsroom and studio to celebrate 57 years of all-news radio. It was back to the usual news format at 1, but the farewells continued from staffers and guests. Before saying her farewell, anchor Anita Bonita brought Keith Olbermann on the air to share some of his thoughts about the diminished state of today’s news media.

On Friday, the usual format continued for one last day, mostly with fill-in hosts, but it was also a final day for regulars such as meteorologist Craig Allen and traffic guru Tom Kaminski. With the Mets on a West Coast road trip, the honor of the final live airshift on Newsradio 880 went to Levon Putney, who led into the 9 PM start of the pre-game show with some poignant thoughts of his own about how much gets lost when dependable news sources get disrupted by today’s economy and changing tastes in media consumption.

The original plan for winding down WCBS had called for live newscasts to continue into the weekend, but that changed at the last minute, so Putney’s final “Late Edition” recorded hour continued through the night and into Saturday, until one last retrospective show hit the air.

If Thursday’s live retrospective show was all about the more recent years of all-news on 880, the two-hour show that debuted at 8 AM and repeated several times over the weekend dug even deeper. Produced by station history guru David Plotkin and leaning heavily on his own amazing collection of vintage audio, “WCBS Through the Years” featured audio from as far back as the 1920s, a love letter to the people like us who still remember the days of WAHG and WABC, A. H. Grebe and Bill Paley and Ed Murrow and Arthur Godfrey.

WCBS’ service elements continued through the weekend, including traffic and weather together on the 8s and, strangely, promos for the shows that would never air after the weekend. In its final hour on Sunday night, it was the usual “Magazine” collection of feature segments from earlier in the week – right up until 11:45, when a segment about jorts was interrupted by the farewell piece that Cabot had recorded on Friday.

What do you say at the end of just under 100 years of radio history? If you’re Cabot, the heart and soul of WCBS for four decades, you make it personal. After having some fun firing off several decades worth of news sounders and jingles – because hey, why not? – and reading the names of dozens of WCBS staffers from across the years, Cabot wrapped up with a recollection of his childhood, when his father took him to visit WCBS in its old Black Rock newsroom, launching him into the career that made him an icon at the station he grew up listening to.

“Parents, you never know what impact these random acts of love and attention may have on your children,” Cabot said over the strains of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” itself a thoughtful throwback to other New York radio endings. (It was the last song WABC played as it ended Musicradio 77 in 1982, and it marked the end of WNBC in 1988 as well, and it was apparently the idea of producer Ray Martel, running the board in those final moments, to include it at the end of WCBS. That’s his photo of the studio on Sunday night.)

Listeners tuning in across the eastern half of the country on AM 880 then heard Cabot’s final WCBS legal ID, 30 seconds or so of dead air, and the new legal ID for “WHSQ and WCBS-FM HD2 New York” joining the new ESPN Radio format in progress.

That was that, mostly, although the unusual nature of the deal between Audacy and Good Karma Brands meant some confusion for streaming listeners. There’s no single stream now that carries all the same content as AM 880 and WCBS-FM’s 101.1-HD2. Instead, there’s an ESPN New York stream from Good Karma that carries the local talk shows and overnight ESPN network content that’s been heard on WEPN-FM (98.7) and is now on 880, but there’s also a separate “Audacy Mets Radio” stream from Audacy that will have the Mets games that continue on 880, with Infinity Sports Radio content (also heard on WFAN-FM’s 101.9-HD2) filling time when the Mets aren’t on.

Over the next days and weeks, we’ll get answers to a few more lingering questions. It appears that local ESPN New York talkers such as Michael Kay will keep going on the stream while the Mets take over 880 during day games – but that local talk will also bump the network content off WEPN (1050) for New York over-the-air listeners. What will happen to Rutgers sports that had been on 880, and what about possible Mets conflicts with Rangers and Knicks games down the road this fall? We’ll find out.

And of course there’s that other big question still awaiting an answer: after a week of simulcasting on 880 and 98.7, what will Emmis put on 98.7 when Good Karma’s lease for that FM facility ends next weekend?

For now, the only people who know are those at Emmis. There’s been no callsign change filed, no indication of a station sale or a new LMA, and whatever the filler programming that will go on 98.7 starting September 1 will be, it hasn’t leaked.

And so we’ll be listening like everyone else, and we’ll let you know as soon as we do.